foreign [Music] [Applause] send a message to an old King we will disguise you so that you can enter the enemy camp find your son's killer and then you can try and Ransom your dead son's body back off him when the king tells his Queen she is terrified don't go man slaying Achilles will kill you too but then the old man King Prime of Troy says something strange and wonderful but difficult for Our Generation to fully comprehend I don't care if the Greeks kill me just as long as I first have the heart comforting embrace of
my dead son in my arms my dead son in my arms doesn't the old man know that the bodies of the Dead are worthless his quest pointless who would risk their life for a corpse the story comes from book 24 of The Iliad a foundation work of Western Civilization written by Homer in 700 BC about a war that took place in 1 300 BC the siege of Troy a bardic poem that was memorized recited and performed for thousands of years you heard the sound of The Iliad Cascade through your ears and in that retelling you
rediscovered the ancient life and death wisdom of our ancestors how to be brave and sorrow how to face your own death with courage how to teach your children how to die how to be a better mortal a better human horse hippo de moyo the very last line in ancient Greek of The Iliad itself a wisdom that we have willfully forgotten and lost in our newish self-centered fear of death in contrast we have subcontracted our mortality out modern death absurdly has become a medical specialism palliative care a foreign country we never visit are only at the
end of our own lives the ultimate form of death denial just as we have forbidden ourselves not only the embrace but the very sight of our own dead forbidden or shall we take a test can you take the fingers of your right hand yeah you everyone and count off the number of corpses that you have seen touched kissed and embraced in your entire life one or two or none will your corpse count make it to the fingers of your left hand and how could that be in a world where everyone is mortal on our TV
screens we would pixely out that final Act of homeric love the dead Hector in his father's arms on the grounds of taste and public decency and the advertising Revenue but our existential flight has not made us stronger wiser More Death courageous just more fearful we're far too sad too frightened of our own death our conception of death has narrowed to an eye thing never an hour thing the terminally ill are often ashamed of their sickening and height from sight we're embarrassed about what to say to a colleague who's lost someone they love embarrassed by our
mortality worried that if we say anything we will make them more sad and sad of course is bad the pleasures of Sorrow grieving openly together are unrecognizable to us though they are often cited in The Iliad along with motherly advice to have more sex as a form of grief therapy advice which Speaking from personal experience can do a Grieving Soul a world of good we are more afraid of dying than those warriors on the plains of Troy more conquered by Death and of course you always would be more sad and more afraid if you believe
that you will only ever face death alone and in Terror a once in a death time experience a me death never are we death but what about if you train for death the same way that we all train to drive a car taking lessons of an instructor going on little laps around your local neighborhood sit in a whole series of tests which even if you failed you'd get to reset again a common social experience a Rite of Passage it doesn't sound hard does it now if you've never been to a Trojan wake or an Irish
version of the same thing and only seen the movie you're probably thinking it's just another Irish piss-up a few drunks and some dank bar lamenting their dead uncle Johnny who they buried that morning but you would be dead wrong weeks are the oldest rights of humanity when I was seven my mother took me to meet my first corpse awake on the island of our ancestors an old man with hairy nostrils lying in a box who I instinctively knew wasn't sleeping even then in her maternal care she was teaching her boy to overcome the fear of
death just as her community had overcome their fear together for thousands of years my family have lived in the same Village on an island off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland for the last 250 years a real wake has got a real dead body a dead one of us now they don't say much but you sure can learn a lot in their company every human being who you have ever touched before in love or anger is a warm-blooded mammal but the dead are so cold they could be carved from Marble later in life when
I took my own Dead Brother Bernard in my arms and kissed and embraced him I could not at first believe that this Stone Cold mannequin had ever been human and here's another existential epiphany as you are sitting here listening to me your heart is pumping blood but when you cut that pump the pressure disappears the blood flows to the lower limbs your cheeks sag your face turns gray your bloodless fingers a yellow ivory and the great animating current of personality like the ignition on your car is just gone so what happens then yeah what we
shouldn't do and what our ancestors didn't do is then say something stupid like that's just a shell forget about it you know the being that you loved in life never existed outside that body and if you love that person in life how should you not Revere and respect their body and death the Romans the Celts the Greeks revered their dead like a newborn child the dead were never to be left alone and always had someone to watch over them until they were led to rest sad was good too there was no shame and sorrow at
the gates of Troy even man slaying Achilles wept until his breastplate was wet with tears and women cried and grieved openly at funerals the bodies of the Dead were of worth together our ancestors enacted a whole raft of rituals to bind up the wound of mortality Comfort The Afflicted bury their dead and get on with the rest of their lives they gave of themselves freely and they had a great time too feasting drinking and having sex at funerals death and here is a really big idea was and is and every other day sort of event
just as it is in Ireland today where people still go in great numbers to wakes and funerals and an ordinary person might see dozens maybe hundreds of dead bodies in the course of their lifetime now funerals can be sad but there is nothing abstract or sentimental about an Irish wake the old woman in the box that red-haired child wrapped up in a shroud is another dead human another one of us wrapped up though in these corpse and Counting rituals are a lot of profound protocols you see at that week you know this is what death
looks like this is what death is you can reach into the coffin and touch and those protocols allow you to do things so for instance there is a licensing of grief being angry tearful grieving crying a recognition of irrevocable change in the very public deadness of the deceased a communal acknowledgment of bereavement and loss an unflinching mortal solidarity a we death not a me death sharing the company of the dead at Wicks and funerals was our for mothers mortality driving lessons they're how to live and die manual with a list of embedded instructions like how
being mortal is the one thing in life that you will never get to choose how thinking that your Immortal is a foolish idea how the pleasures of Sorrow open public grief can heal up a wounded soul and how together we can conquer our fear of death sounds good eh but I wonder is anyone thinking it will never work in today's America I don't know who my next door neighbors are families are scattered there's no communities left to do these weight things with but again you would be dead wrong we all have the power as individuals
to reenact the wisdom of our ancestors confronted in our mortality we feel we often feel powerless Deathstroke but all you need to do is ReDiscover yourself be a bit more Irish if you like maybe you just never recognized yourself as part of the same mortal community but it is easy to reconnect if you want to try not because you're being altruistic but for purely selfish reasons free dying lessons who else did you expect would teach you how to die apart from another dying human all you have to do is overcome your fear using the tools
that you already have in your hands like your phones so on the day that you hear that someone has lost someone they love you don't wait but you reach out then with that phone and call them up and say I'm sorry for your loss or go visit the sick and dying and try to be there for the moment of death for the witness and the Wonder nothing else that you will ever do in life will be more profound or more life affirming or go to more funerals even if you think you don't know the dead
person that well I can assure you as long as you are breathing you know them well enough give of yourself freely because even by these small steps you will be recognizing yourself as part of the Great mortal us just as human just as vulnerable as all the lives around you death matters because life matters and the two are indivisible don't worry if you feel awkward at first practice practice practice until it's just like getting in that car and going and you don't even think about it though your own death will take you a whole lifetime
to get right so after I gave up on going to Foreign Wars and the maturity of Youth I turned the bardic poet and I wrote this praise song in honor of my Island mother's who for thousands of years never faltered to cradle the dead to rest it's called if I could sing if I could sing I would not sing of the Fallen city of Ilias and Glory's gone or Hector's blood dried and stained in sand no I would sing of an island far out to the West rising sea plot spray lashed a citadel of stone
World deep in the blue ocean another Troy an Irish Troy closer to the sinking Sun unconquered if you could hear this song you too would listen and rupture to the emerald kinsha Keening woman crying out grieving heartstruck in Eternal Chorus at the wake where the last best hope of humanity beats on that mortal being incarnate and flesh shall not live love or die alone and if I could sing if we could sing together my brothers and sisters surely then we should never stop the singing of this song thank you [Music]
